Need a new display, right now?

Today is perhaps not the best day to buy a new monitor, FreeSync 2 should be arriving soon, as should high refresh rate UHD models, and well, the HDR standard is a wee bit more dynamic than we want right now. There are some out there who will feel the need to upgrade or to replace a veteran panel which has hit retirement age, so check out TechSpot's current recommendations. They have spilt their displays into four categories, 1080p, 1440p, 4K, Ultrawide aka 21:9 and a budget category. For the most part, they chose G-SYNC as NVIDIA holds the largest marketshare but they did include a few FreeSync alternatives.

"With the gaming monitor market expanding to all sorts of display types and technologies, it's time we had a dedicated Best Of feature dedicated to them. Today we'll provide you with 5-10 key monitor recommendations across a variety of popular categories."

Kind of expensive for just 1080p, but the VA panel is nice, so at least the black levels won't be terrible.

Quantum dots aren't really that useful now because they are just used as a backlight enhancement for a standard LCD panel, so they still have all the standard LCD problems. If/when we get electroluminescent quantum dots, however, that will be the tech to get because it will have all of the advantages of OLED/emissive displays, but be even brighter, better colors, and with no longevity issues.

Quantum dot enhanced back light helps get much more accurate colors with much lower power. I have an old Dell U3011 which is 2560x1600 with a CCFL backlight. It has very accurate colors, but it burns near 200 W or something like that to do it, so it is essentially a space heater. It doesn’t directly help with black levels but it can enhance maximum brightness. There is a lot of other tech going into enhancing black levels on LCD, such that the next generation may be getting a lot closer to OLED without OLED longevity issues.

I don’t know how far we are from self emissive quantum dots. We might be closer to micro led displays, would be better than OLED also; higher brightness and better longevity.